Capernaum – For this western viewer, this is an eye-opening and harrowing snapshot of what is going on in Beirut seen through the lens of a 12 year old boy named Zain (played by a Syrian refugee with a demonic zeal in his eyes) living and hustling on the streets. You see an environment that is festering with poverty and overcrowding, buffeted by desperate regional migration from Africa and Syria. The city, the state and the family unit as completely dysfunctional. The grimmest, funniest and best sequence is when Zain is basically raising an Ethiopian baby alone! and features Zain dragging his child, Jonas, around on a skateboard in a pot. . . My main critique is of the courtroom frame for the story, which gets a little too sappy for my taste. Director Nadine Labaki uses impressionistic cinematography and a frantic editing style to capture it all. She is someone to keep an eye on.

Happy Hour – This nearly 5 and a half hour film is an absolute delight. You follow four female friends in their 30’s, basically just exploring their friendships and personal relationships. Much of the film focuses on the mundane – family unit routines, jobs, commutes – until one of the friends reveals she cheated on her husband and is now filing for divorce. Things set off from there though nothing is ever that dramatic or boils over, it’s almost anti-Hollywood; nonetheless, it builds and builds into something dynamic, complex and alive. Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has a penchant for holding on the smallest details for as long as possible, surprising you later as the meaning sinks in. Scenes are rarely less than 10 minutes and frequently much longer. His digital cinematography was inspiring too, it has that HD soap opera look, but over time i found it got me much closer to the characters. Again, it felt more real. For example, he plays a lot with contrast, opting to shoot characters in front of bright windows, knowing you won’t be able to see the actor. He’s also quite restless with his editing and framing. A picnic scene with the 4 women will feature 6-8+ different angles and he’s constantly switching between them. I cannot wait to see Hamaguchi’s latest, Asako I & II.

Destroyer – Seedy, opioid fueled LA neo-noir. Nicole Kidman is disturbing and hideous, a make-up feat I thought impossible. Similar to Aaron Katz’s Gemini, this one can’t compete with the best LA noirs this century (Mulholland, Dr., Drive, Brick, Inherent Vice, BR2049) but still manages to carve out its own little space. Director Karyn Kusama favors marginal genre tweaking here, reminded me a lot of Soderbergh’s genre exercises.